The present invention relates generally to communications, and more particularly, to a system and a method for analyzing a user's collection of communications, such as electronic mail messages, telephone messages, voicemails, instant messaging dialogues and telephone logs to determine the identity of contacts within the communications, the relative priority of the contacts within the communications and any relationships between the contacts themselves and between the contacts and the user.
The ever-growing variety of mass communication devices and services such as wireless telephones, pagers, portable computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), set top boxes, electronic mail, and instant messaging among others, has exponentially increased the number of different types of communications that one may receive on a daily basis. As a result, it has become very difficult to track one's personal and professional contacts since after even a short period of time, one could have hundreds of unique communications, such as electronic mail messages and voicemails to sort through.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to be able to easily analyze a collection of communications, such as electronic mail messages, to determine the identity of one's personal and professional contact, the relative priorities of these contacts and any existing relationship between and among these contacts.